The crazy high-calorie diets of seven professional athletes

The sheer amount of food here will astound you.

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Thon Maker, NBA player

Sudanese-Australian basketball prodigy Thon Maker needs to put on weight, and he's doing his darnedest to shovel down every last morsel in sight. Weighing in at a respectable 93kg, it is Maker's height which makes him look so skinny - even with his shoes off he's 7'1 tall, or a whopping 216cm. To beat this, the nutrition team at the Milwaukee Bucks has him on a stomach-churning amount of food.

(Image: Getty)

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6,000 calories a day

Eating more than double the daily recommended amount of calories doesn't come easy for Thon, but each day he manages to put away six eggs, porridge, white potatoes, a protein bar and juice - and that's just for breakfast! After that he follows up with enormous plates of pasta, protein shakes and fistfuls of meat.

Thon's calorie equivalent in Big Macs from McDonalds: 23.5 Big Macs

(Image: iStock)

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Michael Phelps, swimmer

The appetite of this greatest-ever swimmer is almost as legendary as his feats in the pool. Thanks to the enormous total-body demand swimming takes on its athletes - and the 12 hour training days he regularly performed - Phelps needed an astonishing amount of calories just to keep his energy up. Even more shockingly is how he managed to stay under 10 percent body fat the whole time.

(Image: Getty)

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12,000 calories a day

To emulate Phelps' daily breakfast, you'd have to choke back three fried egg sandwiches, five chocolate chip pancakes, french toast, a five egg omelet and porridge all in the one meal. From there, it's time for lunch which consisted of more sandwiches, energy drinks and 400 grams of pasta. For dinner? An entire cheese and pepperoni pizza followed by another 400 grams of pasta!

Phelp's calorie equivalent in Big Macs from McDonalds: 46 Big Macs

(Image: Instagram)

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Usain Bolt, sprinter

Considering Bolt's races don't last any longer than 10 seconds, you'd think he could take it pretty easy on the buffet. In reality, his diet is absolutely loaded with calories - not just to fuel his sprinting but to give him energy to attack the weights day after day. There's another surprise too - much of Bolt's diet is actually comprised of fast food!

(Image: Getty)

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5,500 calories a day

Chicken nuggets! During an Olympic qualifying meet in China, Bolt ate 10,000 chicken nuggets in the 10-day window that he was there for. In several interviews Bolt has outlined how he likes to get in a few nuggets and chicken wings before hitting the track for training - he dislikes foreign food (especially when racing overseas) and prefers to lump most of his calories in at night just before he goes to bed.

Bolt's calorie equivalent in Big Macs from McDonalds: 21.4 Big Macs

(Image: iStock)

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Hafbor 'Thor' Bjornsson, strongman

Weighing in at 205kg and standing 206cm tall, Hafbor Bjornsson is an enormous man. If that wasn't enough to spike up his appetite, his training will: as one of the competitors for the World's Strongest Man competition, he regularly pulls four and five hour stints in the gym lifting hundreds of kilos over and over. So what does it take to fuel this literal man mountain?

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10,000 calories a day

Despite consuming five times the calories of an average man, Bjornsson chooses to stay away from quick and convenient fast food. Over the course of just one day, he tucks into over a dozen eggs, over a kilo of beef, over two kilos of sweet potatoes and enough spinach to fill a paddock. He even sets an alarm in the middle of the night to get up and consume more protein shakes - because even sleep can't hold this mans appetite back.

Bjornsson's calorie equivalent in Big Macs: 39 Big Macs

(Image: Instagram)

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J.J Watt, American football player

Life is tough when you're the jock football player. Not only do you have to perform in front of millions of people every week, you've got to eat enough to sustain your mammoth 131kg body. If that makes you think J.J might be a little slow, you're wrong - this natural athlete can run 35 metres in under five seconds and has a standing vertical leap of 154 centimetres!

(Image: Getty)

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9,000 calories a day

According to Watt, in order to reach the amount of calories he needs to maintain his bulk, he's begun "smashing avocados" like they were going out of fashion. Over the course of a single day, Watts munches his way through 24 eggs, fifty slices of bacon, 20 chicken breasts and enough sweet potato to sink a ship. He says that he often has to wrap smaller meals in bacon just to get them down.

Watt's calorie equivalent in Big Macs: 35 Big Macs

(Image: iStock)

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Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, former wrestler turned actor

Okay, so 'The Rock' isn't technically an athlete but he certainly eats and works out like one. Everyday he gets up at 4:30am and pounds out an hour-long jog, before hitting his home gym for another two hours of weightlifting. You'd think that would be enough to burn every calorie on his body - but Dwayne Johnson walks around at an incredibly lean 120kg, standing 196cm tall.

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6,000 calories a day

Much like Bjornsson, Johnson is not content to get his calories from junk food - which means that the sheer size of his meals grow exponentially. Everyday, the actor and former wrestler puts away a kilo of fish, a dozen eggs, steak, chicken, a kilo or two of potatoes and even a cheeky cheat day or two. In the photo above Johnson shares what he calls "iPad-sized peanut butter smores" - a favourite for his cheat meals.

Johnson's calorie equivalent in Big Macs: 23 Big Macs

(Image: Instagram)

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Ryan Lochte, swimmer

He's half the size of the other athletes on this list, but US-based swimmer Ryan Lochte sure can put away some food. Much like Phelps, Lochte burns an enormous amount of calories simply to swim the sheer distance that he does. So what kind of fuel does a 88kg, 180cm swimmer really need?

(Image: Getty)

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8,000 calories

To fuel his swimming, Lochte needs to eat a huge 8,000 calories from all the basics, including eggs, steak, chicken and even ice-cream. But during the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing, Lochte was consuming free McDonalds for every meal. Breakfast was two handfuls of hash browns followed up with pancakes, lunch was an order of up to 10 big macs, and dinner was much the same - all washed down with chocolate thickshakes. You'd think that would've slowed him down, but in Beijing Lochte won an incredible four gold medals.